


Monsters

by GallicGalaxy



Category: The Walking Dead (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, I only upload when I should be asleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 10:37:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10920111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallicGalaxy/pseuds/GallicGalaxy
Summary: Carl has a conversation with his father - AU wherein Carl stays with Negan and the Saviors rather than returning to Alexandria, and is essentially raised by Negan for several years while Rick remains imprisoned.





	Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Ok so...this fic is within an AU, but I didn't know whether or not I wanted to do anything much bigger with this AU, so I just wrote this little slice of it. The quotes are flashbacks of sorts, and are they really necessary?? well...probably not  
> basically the AU is that Carl was like "fuck you dad I'm gonna go live with negan" and then he...did, and the Saviors actually defeat Alexandria (mostly bc they trapped Rick in a cell and everyone else fell apart). so this is angry teenage Carl, abt the age he currently is in the comics, having been basically raised by Negan for quite a while (so he's even more full of anger than normal Carl)

_“Oh boy, can I keep him? I promise I'll take good care of him, I really will!”_

 

Carl was staring down at the floor, head up but eyes down, sliding his thumbs back and forth over each other. He was sitting tall, shoulders squared, but not breathing a single word. Rick was looking at him like a beaten dog peering up at its master.

That was all Rick ever did now. That and mewling at Carl like a little lost kitten, trying desperately to fish out some glimmer of affection that wasn't there. He always spoke to Carl like he was still a little kid, as though no time had passed since he'd been thrown in that cell. Rick's world was that cell – a dark little square with iron bars in a basement underneath the Sanctuary – and Carl, leering at him from the outside, negating all the falsified affection he tried to fling through the walls of his cage.

“Hello, Carl.” Rick finally sighed, after a long period of intimidating silence.

“Hello.” Was Carl's flat, terse response.

“Well...how are you doing?” Rick asked hoarsely, shifting and sitting up a little. Carl's eye skirted the edges of his long, ratty hair where it dominated his silhouette, but he didn't let his gaze reach his father's face.

“I'm fine.” Carl answered bitterly.

“I know, I know. You like things here.” Rick sighed once more, letting his face fall and cords of unkempt hair conceal his eyes. “I wasn't trying to say that you didn't.” He murmured. Carl crossed his legs with a lazy huff that wasn't quite a sigh.

“Do you still think I'm gonna try to come back to you some day?” Carl asked bluntly. Rick took a deep breath, but didn't respond to him. “I mean, you're in a fucking prison cell. Do you really think, after all this, that there's any chance left?” Carl spat, pressing him despite his previous unresponsiveness.

“I can hope so.” Rick mumbled, almost inaudibly. “I can wish.” He shook his head a little as he spoke, his voice getting lost in the matted hair of his beard.

“Of course you can.”

 

_“I don't...I don't wanna go back home. I think I wanna stay here with you.”_

_“Hmm, isn't that just adorable? You're so cute I could eat you up right now like the big bad motherfucking wolf. But really, kid, I wouldn't put a bet on that lasting very long. You'd start missing your Daddy faster than you'd think.”_

 

“That's all you ever did.” Carl growled. “You were just like all the other shitwads in Alexandria. All you wanted was to hide behind your walls and wish and hope and pretend everything was okay.” He scoffed, sounding almost disappointed in his father. “Just pretend like everything's back to the way it was before, right?” He snarled, narrowing his eye and tilting the bad side of his face in Rick's direction. “Well, it's not. Things are never gonna be like they were before. We don't live in that world anymore, Rick.”

He couldn't have pinpointed the moment, the conversation, the day, or probably even the year when he'd stopped referring to Rick as 'Dad' and had started calling him by his first name. He'd started saying 'Dad – _Rick_ ' in conversation with other people long before he'd started calling Rick by his first name to his face. A lot of people assumed, for whatever reason, that when Carl said 'Dad' he meant 'Negan'.

Shaking his head and mumbling like a drunk, Rick managed to utter, “You sound just like him when you talk.” At this statement, Carl flared his nostrils and sighed through his nose, glaring powerfully at Rick. He let his crossed leg return to the floor and rocked back and forth a little, kicking his heels against the old barstool he used to sit in front of Rick's cell.

“We don't live in that world anymore, and you don't live in that world anymore.” Carl continued, deciding to disregard his father. “But you wanted to pretend. You wanted to stay in your little dollhouse.” He hissed, leaning forward and setting one hand on his knee, while the other forearm lay slung across its corresponding leg. “And even before Alexandria, what did you do? You tried to block out the world. You always tried to pretend like there was some perfect place in this world where nothing could be wrong.”

“I wanted to protect you.” Rick sobbed, shaking his head morosely and keeping his eyes closed. “I wanted there to be a place...that was safe for you. A place I could feel good about you growing up in.” Rick lifted his head meekly, though Carl still avoided his eye. “I just...wanted to protect you.”

 

_“Hold up there, Rick, old buddy. Didn't you hear the boy? He doesn't want to go with you.”_

 

“And some fucking job you did of that.” Carl argued, voice stiff and cold and eye clouded over with blind, dull hatred. “Let's see – I got shot, more than once. As a matter of fact, I got shot in the eye.” He rambled, straightening his back. “This one.” He sneered, tapping his index finger against the patch that sat over his deformity. “I killed Shane. I killed Ben. You got Mom and Judith killed.” Carl rambled, flippantly nonchalant in his tone.

“I was almost _raped_.” He continued. Carl stepped silently off his barstool and took the short handful of steps up to the walls of Rick's prison cell. He swung one of his hands up and let it rest on the bars, leaning himself closer to speak directly to Rick. “I watched you cut a man apart until you couldn't tell what part of him was what.” He hissed lowly, gritting his teeth the moment he closed his mouth. “And it was _you_ who was eviscerating a man, and _Abraham_ who was holding me.” Carl growled, leering angrily at his father.

“Don't you get it?” He sighed incredulously, pushing himself off the bars and sliding back a little. “You already failed.” Carl snarled, starting to raise his voice. “This world had already fucked me inside-out, and no fucking flowerbeds in Alexandria could've made me grow up a nice well-adjusted suburban kid.”

“I made mistakes.” Rick whined pitifully. “I made a lot of mistakes.” He lifted his head and tried to look Carl in the eye, but all he found was silent, wrathful anger. “There were things I couldn't control. There are some things none of us can control. Things not even Negan can control.” Rick attempted to defend himself. He hadn't moved from his spot whatsoever, outside of shifts in his posture.

 

_“You give him the fuck back to me right now! I swear I'll tear every last one of you apart before I let you take my son from me! Don't you even try to pull this bullshit!”_

_“Calm. The. Fuck. Down. **Please**. You're scaring him.”_

 

“I know.” Carl answered callously, moving back up to the jail cell's walls. “But there are some things we _can_ control.” He declared. “And I've taken control of them.” He thought he saw Rick nod a few times, but it might've been an unintended action on Rick's part rather than a gesture of agreement. “That's why I chose to stay here with Negan and the Saviors.” Carl nearly whispered, pressing his upper body to the rigid iron bars.

“Do you really think Negan is in control of more than I was?” Rick asked, in a raspy voice that carried no hint of outward hostility. Carl was certain there was still hostility somewhere within him regardless of whether or not he displayed it.

“No.” Carl coughed. He pushed himself back, standing tall while leaning his hand against the bars. “I know he is. _We_ are.” He declared, sauntering back to his seat. “You haven't seen what it's really like here. How we live. We're strong. Stronger than you and your people ever were.”

“My people...” Rick repeated. “They were your people too.”

“They _were_.” Carl scoffed in resistance.

“They were your friends. Your family.” Rick countered, his eyes glittering slightly as a spark of life returned to him.

“They _were_.” Carl repeated, more forcefully this time. “But my family is _dead_. My mother? My baby sister? They're gone. It's just you.” He continued, implementing the decisive emphasis one would use when insisting facts to another. “And do you know why they're gone, all these people you called your family and your friends?” He began. His voice raised very slightly, beginning its evolution into sounding more threatening.

“They died because _you_ were weak.” Carl growled, wide dead eye glaring emptily into the dim void of Rick's tiny jail cell. He leaned forward once more, muscles twitching with agitation. “You never wanted to be a leader, but they wanted to follow you.” Carl shook his head disdainfully. “And you only led them to failure and death.” Carl took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair, pausing to clutch the hair on the back of his head in his pallid fingers.

His hair was dark and sleek, never too long. Always well-groomed and artificially glossy, brushed smoothly away from his face.

 

_“Don't you think it's cute? He's like your little mini-me. Negan Junior.”_

 

“All those people.” Carl growled abruptly, letting his hand fall firmly back to his knee. “Mom and Judith? They're just the tip of the iceberg.” As he spoke, he heard Rick breath a long, ragged sigh, and saw his chest heave slowly. “Do you remember Hershel? His kids? Do you remember those little girls?” Carl interrogated him, leaning even further forward. “Did you see them? Can you remember what they looked like, lying there?” He shook his head slightly as he spoke, one corner of his mouth trying to twist upwards into a disbelieving smirk.

“Did you think I never _heard_ about what happened?” Carl almost laughed.

“I didn't...I couldn't have known.” Rick squealed. Carl set his jaw.

“You let us sit around and drink tea with inmates.” He snapped. “You locked up the wrong guy.” Carl was sitting upright now, poised almost elegantly in a picturesque tall, straight-lined pose. “You might as well have cut their heads off yourself, or started that little mutiny yourself.”

“Carl, I couldn't have known.” Rick pleaded, lifting his head and furrowing his brow in distress.

“You were a fucking cop.” Carl laughed incredulously, shaking his head violently. “You couldn't have known? There was _nothing_ you could've known or seen or thought of?” He angrily kicked his heel against the base of the barstool. “And you let the Governor come right to our gates. You fucked that whole prison fucking _sideways_.”

“You never used to swear like this before.” Rick mumbled. Carl rubbed his brow in frustration.

“Don't start that.” He growled roughly. “You don't wanna hear about it, do you? You don't want to remember.” Low and threatening, like a dog growling through a chain-link fence, its black eyes locking with those of passersby. “You don't want to remember Tyreese, or Hershel, or Alice – remember her? She helped Mom give birth to Judith, didn't she?” Rick put his head in his hands. “Everything that happened to that prison, that's all on you.”

“Carl, I couldn't-”

“You couldn't have known, you couldn't have done anything.”

 

_“Hey...Dad? Oh, um...sorry, Negan. I didn't mean to call you Dad.”_

 

Carl lifted his head and stared his father in the eye. Rick looked away first.

“You don't have to keep saying it.” He said icily.

“I know you don't believe me.” Rick sighed despairingly. “But I did all I could. I made mistakes, I know...” He struggled as though he was flailing against a current – a current of stirring madness excited by confinement and solitude and adversity. “I fucked up.”

“You fucked up, and you _kept_ fucking up.” Carl argued, tearing through his pathetic stammering like a knife going through a paper screen. “You got to Alexandria, and you...you just patronized all those people like the fucking children they were.” He snarled. Once again, his feet lighted on the ground, and he stalked up to the bars of Rick's cell like a wild animal. “A bunch of stupid children playing house behind their fucking walls.” Carl slammed the side of his fist against the bars of Rick's cage, staring him down like that same wild animal would glare at its prey through a glass barrier. “Living in that perfect world you always wanted.”

“That wasn't what I wanted.” Rick told him, regaining some faint trace of firmness. Carl looked at him – cowering, filthy, beaten to pieces but still balling his fists around hope for something that never meant anything in the first place.

“You knew they were weak.” Carl spat, uncurling his fist and gripping one of the bars until he felt the frail, thin bones of his hand warn him of its rigidity. “You got yourself into power, but you never changed them. They were always weak. You were still just a part of their stupid little play.”

“I wanted a place that was _safe_.” Rick hissed, actually straightening his spine a bit as he tried to muster up some sort of dominance. A tiger in a circus cage, too weak to even roar. “A place people could live. Something better for everyone.” His eyes glimmered like the surface of a lake in the moonlight, almost as if to threaten tears. “Is that really so different here with the Saviors?”

 

_“Is there...something you need, sweetie?”_

_“Oh, uh, no. Sorry.”_

_“Amber, darling, your innocence becomes you. The boy ain't staring at you because he needs something.”_

 

Carl was silent for a few moments, keeping his lips pressed tightly together but not softening his sharp gaze.

“That's what _everybody_ wants.” He answered at last. “But to get it you have to scratch and bite and claw and you can't be afraid to tear other people down to get it or keep it.” He hissed. “You don't get it, do you? It's not about what you want, it's about what you do to hold onto it.” Carl released his grip on the bar he'd seized, and his hand ached slightly in protest. “You can hope and wish all you want, and you can sit there in your little kennel and say whatever makes you feel better about yourself, but none of that fucking matters.”

Rick kept his head up. Carl shook his head as though warning him. “Do you know what happened to all those people in Alexandria?” He pushed the emotion away from his voice and went back to speaking lowly and straightly, channeling all of his energy into being intimidating.

“I know.” Rick mumbled. “I know what happened.”

“They all got killed.” Carl answered himself. “You got so pissed off about me staying here that you let yourself get shoved in that cage.” He snarled. “You let yourself get shoved in that cage so that you didn't have to _watch_ them die.” He raised his voice in accusation, writhing up to the immalleable iron bars.

“You remember Glenn? Abraham?” Carl began, pronouncing their names as distinctly as possible. “It's a pity about Abraham. He would've made a good Savior.” Carl softened his tone without even thinking about it. Perhaps it was a semi-conscious instinct for manipulation that he had learned, or perhaps it was the memory of Abraham's arm wrapped around him in a stoic attempt to allow him comfort.

 

_“Leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you anymore.”_

_“Why? Sophia, I thought we were-”_

_“Friends? Are you serious? Because of you...everyone's dead. Maggie? My Mom? You let her die. You killed her. You killed everybody! They're all dead because of you! And I should be dead too. I...I **hate** you. Just go away. Don't try to talk to me ever again.”_

 

_“_ You saw them.” Carl returned to the present in a moment, eliminating all immediate memories of Abraham and pulling up visions of the other citizens of Alexandria, locked in a gruesome losing battle and floundering through their own blood. “You watched them die. But you didn't watch Andrea die.” He began, hinting some nigh-imperceptible sadism. “You didn't watch Aaron and Eric die. You didn't watch Maggie die. You didn't watch Olivia or Heath or anyone else you knew _die_ out there without you.”

“I didn't choose that, Carl.”

“Bullshit.” Carl coughed. “You let yourself get put in that cell and you know it. You gave up.” He snapped, keeping his voice raised to a near yell. “You didn't see what happened to anyone else. All those people you said you cared about.” Carl sneered through the criss-crossing bars. “They _died_. We destroyed Alexandria. We took everything they had.”

“I _know_.” Rick panted, pleading to Carl to stop.

“I told you there was no-one left once.” Carl neglected to respond to him. “No-one from Alexandria who became a Savior. But there are.” He proclaimed, lips showing a curl suggestive of a hateful grin. “You wouldn't recognize them now.” Carl whispered. Rick had lifted his head and was staring at Carl in what looked like sinking disappointment and tragic wistfulness. His despair bounced harmlessly off Carl’s cold shell and left no impact on him.

“That's all that's left of Alexandria.” He continued. “Ruins and bones and a handful of Saviors who hate Rick Grimes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Carl barked, nearly shouting at his father once more. “And you sat here in your cage and ignored the world again, just because you thought that somehow you could convince me to come running back to you.” The boy clawed at the bars, shaking them like he wanted to pull the walls apart. Even if he could've done so, he questioned whether Rick would even make an attempt to leave.

“You tried for so long. You thought everything would work out in your favor.” Carl kicked tauntingly at the bars with his steel-toed boot. “And you still think that, don't you? Somewhere in there, you think I'm just like I was before. You think you could 'fix' all this.”

 

_“Carl...I'm...sorry about what I said the other day. I do still want to keep talking to you. I want you to keep being my friend. I'm scared here. I really don't know anyone. I just want...I don't want to lose you too.”_

 

“You have a better chance of Mom and Judith running back to you!” Carl yelled, fists balled at his sides. “You think I still care? You think I still care?” He was poised in an aggressive stance as though challenging his father to a fight despite the obvious barrier between them. Perhaps he would've won; Rick had been sequestered in that cell for years, and from here he looked quite weak. Ragged and soft and defeated.

“Carl...” Rick coughed uncomfortably. “If you didn't care at all, then why do you still come down here?” He asked. He was trembling slightly.

“You asked me that before.” Carl huffed, shoulders taut and chest heaving. “And do you really want to know why I come down here?” He had lowered his voice somewhat, but his eye was still wide and his nostrils were still flaring when he breathed.

Rick looked at him and nodded once. Carl pushed himself back up against the bars.

“Because without me you'd sit down here and somehow find a way in your head that this whole thing worked out.” He hissed quietly, spite pulsing through his voice. “You would know, but you wouldn't really _know_. And it's only because of me that you _do_ know what happened to your little fucking dollhouse and everyone in it.” Carl growled. Rick's expression didn't change. “It's because of me that you remember that you failed, and it's because of me that you remember what happened _because_ you failed.” Carl continued, equally as unfaltering as his father.

“And you know what happened to _me_. You know _exactly_ what happened to me.” Carl spat malevolently. He had retracted any semblance of emotion, including anger, and was speaking in a hauntingly hollow voice. “You got to watch me become something you never wanted me to be. Something you would call a _monster_.” He growled lowly. He was staring straight at his father, but not at his eyes; he was staring slightly above them, but still giving the impression of looking him in the eye.

“But there's a reason that you're on the inside of that cell and I'm still outside.”

 

_“Carl...is there anyone...is there anyone else from Alexandria who's still alive? Who's still here, with the Saviors?”_

_“...No.”_

 

Rick was staring blankly at him, head up and expression blank except for some vague details of sadness that may have just been permanent features at that point. Carl sighed, too powerfully for his body, and pushed himself away from the bars.

“Carl...no matter what happens, you'll still be my son.” He spoke weakly, more quietly than Carl could remember him ever speaking before. “And I still love you. No matter what.” He added, with a faint tilt of his head. His eyes brightened and began to shine, though Carl stoicly tried to ignore that.

“I know.” Was Carl's flavorless two-word response. As he stared down the crumpled figure that used to be his father, he thought he saw Rick's eyes glisten powerfully enough to suggest that tears were emerging from them. “Quit that shit.” Carl growled at him. “You haven't cried over me in years.” With that, Carl turned and strode furiously over towards the stairs. He laid one hand on the railing of the stairs and made as if to scale them just as quickly as he'd marched over there.

However, he turned around, facing Rick once more, and jeered, “And if you have...then you're a fucking _pussy_.” With that last insult flung from his hateful young lips, Carl stamped his way up the stairs and raced out.

What he wanted to do, the moment he found himself apart from Rick, was find Negan.

He knew where Negan most likely was, and he made his way up there as quickly as he could manage. He found Negan blissfully unoccupied, and he ran right into Negan's arms, embracing him tightly. He pressed his face against Negan's neck, effectively hiding his expression. After a moment of being taken aback, Negan brought his strong, comforting arms around Carl's back and returned his embrace.

“Aw, what's wrong, kiddo?” Negan purred, very easily detecting some form of distress within him. “You never hug me unless something's wrong.” He chuckled, patting Carl's back firmly.

“I love you.” Carl whimpered weakly against Negan's shoulder.

“And I love you too. What a coincidence.” Negan answered, his voice playful and comforting. “Now, come on, tell me what's wrong.”

 

_“Fuck, where'd I be without you, skullface?”_

 

Carl slowly pulled himself away from Negan, heartbeat already starting to calm and return to its normal pace. “I don't think I'm gonna keep going down to the cells anymore.” He declared, his tone meek and not yet what he would consider recovered. “I'm don't think I'm gonna keep talking to Dad. Rick, I mean.” Carl rubbed at his eye, though it was plenty dry.

“He getting to you?” Negan asked gruffly. Carl had been around him long enough to know that Negan's question contained an implicit offer to deal Rick some sort of punishment, as indirect vengeance for upsetting the boy.

“No. It's fine.” Carl grunted. He sighed smoothly and rubbed idly at the back of his neck. “I think...I got to myself more than he got to me.” He explained. He turned himself away from Negan slightly, staring at the blank wall and gnawing on his own thoughts. “I've said everything I need to say to him.”

“That sounds awfully final.” Negan commented, with a hint of caution in his tone. Carl shook his head.  
“It's just...over.”

“No it's not.” Negan countered him immediately, following it with a confident chuckle. Carl twisted his head back to look up at Negan, and only found amusement on his face. “You're not ready to let go of that yet, kid.” He said, though his voice was still soft and endearing.

“No.” Carl insisted. “It's over.”

 


End file.
